Multiple Unbelongings: Filipino American Theology and the Problem of Home

Out of body experience

Among the many negative effects of Spanish colonization, one of the most devastating and long-lasting was the reordering of Filipino society according to skin color and ancestry. The Spanish did not use a “racial pentagram” as the US government and census later would. ⁸ Under Spain, political and social power were reserved for those with Spanish blood and lighter skin, while those with indigenous heritage and darker skin were barred from political influence, forced to pay higher taxes and provide unpaid labor. ⁹

Peninsulares (pure-blooded, Spanish-born Spaniards) benefited the most from the colonial order, while the term Filipino was initially reserved for people of pure Spanish blood who were born in the Philippines. As in other lands colonized by Spain, the vast majority of the population was referred to as Indios, tying their non-European skin and features to assumptions of savagery and uncivilization. At the bottom of the Spanish colonial system were Negritos, dark-skinned people of specific indigenous backgrounds. Given that this caste system had political, legal, religious, and socioeconomic dimensions for almost four centuries, US Filipino scholars regularly point to its ongoing significance in Filipino and Filipino American social life.

Roger Lee Mendoza ties internalized racism developed during the Spanish colonial period to the widespread practice of skin whitening among Filipinos today. He writes, “‘Western’ notions and standards of beauty and sex appeal have created light or ‘white’ skin hegemonic representations based on alleged superiority of light to dark skin.” ¹⁰ A controversial 2019 advertisement from skin whitening company GlutaMAX shamelessly states, “Three in five Filipinos believe that people with fairer skin receive better treatment from others.” ¹¹ And yet, despite known health risks and warnings from the Philippine government, Mendoza observes that “about one in every two Filipino women uses skin whiteners.” ¹²

Beyond skin whitening, reports indicate more Filipinos undergoing cosmetic surgeries as the appeal and availability of procedures grow. ¹³ Specifically, more Filipinos are pursuing rhinoplasties in order to have narrower, longer noses patterned after Western beauty standards. Augmentation rhinoplasty involves “augmenting the nose bridge or tip” and is “particularly common in the Philippines, where people have naturally lower nose bridges.” ¹⁴ The procedure is now the second-most common cosmetic surgery in the country. ¹⁵

These examples demonstrate that Filipinos past and present, long before migration to the US, are socialized to denigrate or alter their own bodies in order to receive fair treatment, access social goods, and advance socially. This bodily unbelonging has its roots in Spanish colonialism and remains problematic. Further studies are needed to examine the extent to which Christian faith encourages self-acceptance or discourages body alteration. Given that the vast majority of Filipinos and Filipino Americans identify as Christians, however, it can be reasonably assumed that Filipino Christians also participate in these practices.

For US Filipinos, a sense of belonging within American society can remain elusive despite English fluency, formal education, and attempts to assimilate. Nadal writes, “Some studies have found colonial mentality to be negatively correlated with enculturation, personal self-esteem, and collective self-esteem, and positively correlated with depression.” ¹⁶ Adjusting to life as a racial and ethnic minority can also be traumatic, especially when facing microaggressions or the kind of anti-Asian sentiment and violence that surged throughout the US after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate received nearly 11,500 reports of anti-Asian hate between March 19, 2020, and March 31, 2022, including many violent attacks against elderly, first-generation Filipino Americans. ¹⁷ Pastors and ministry leaders serving Filipino Americans must understand these realities in order to develop communities that foster self-acceptance, safety and health, and racial justice advocacy.

Brown brothers, White saviors

When historicizing the relationships between US colonialism and Filipino migration to the States, Filipino American scholars often point out: Filipinos didn’t come to America; America came to the Philippines. This powerful, critical statement highlights colonization and raises a distinction between Filipino Americans and the majority of other Asian and immigrant groups. As a product of US imperialism, the largest waves of Filipino migration to America came immediately after control of the Philippines was transferred from Spain to the United States, in direct response to American labor needs and immigration policies. Because of this, Filipino American immigration and its effects on belonging cannot be rightly understood within the “voluntary immigrant” paradigm, but must be contextualized within colonialism. ¹⁸

As was the case during Spanish colonization, American colonialism was bound up with Christian mission. In a famous 1899 meeting with fellow Methodist leaders, President William McKinley insisted that God had guided him, through prayer, to lead the United States in colonizing the Philippines:

I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night . . . there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died. ¹⁹

Since that time, America has held a god-like presence in the minds and hearts of many Filipinos, promising them salvation through Americanization, yet in many ways failing to treat them as “fellow-men” even after conversion to Protestantism or migration to the States.

American imperialism did not erase Spain’s footprint. Instead, a different regime was laid on top of the first. In God’s Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898–1902, Susan K. Harris writes, “The story of the U.S. special mission became a means of creating a community and specifying who belonged to it. The insiders were those who either were white Protestants or who had fully assimilated to white Protestant culture. The outsiders were everyone in need of uplift. . .” ²⁰ Shortly after the US takeover, Protestant missions and institutions were established throughout the Philippines, creating new ways to pursue belonging within the American colonial order. This is, in part, why many first-generation Filipino American Protestants uphold denominational affiliations originally established in the Philippines. Organizations such as the National Association of Filipino-American United Methodists, Filipino Southern Baptist Fellowship of North America, and the Filipino-American Christian Fellowship of the AG (Assemblies of God) still exist, though their influence on the second and third generations is waning.

More significantly, the creation of American-style institutions simultaneously supported evangelization efforts and supplied American labor needs. For example, the Jaro Evangelical Church of Iloilo City was started in 1901 by American Baptist missionaries. It was the first Baptist church and second Protestant church in the Philippines. Soon afterwards in 1905, Central Philippine University (CPU) was also founded nearby as the first Baptist university and second Protestant university in the country. CPU is home to the oldest nursing college in the Philippines, and nurses graduating from Philippine universities remain instrumental in supplying needed healthcare workers to American hospitals and medical facilities. Sociologist Catherine Ceniza Choy calls this an “empire of care,” the creation of a labor migration system that expanded dramatically after 1965, which now sends nurses around the world. ²¹ Of course, these processes were facilitated by the American government’s decision to make English the primary language of instruction in Philippine schools, beginning in 1902. ²²

Beyond the experiences of highly skilled workers, most Filipino migrants never became model minorities nor found belonging in America. Writer and activist Carlos Bulosan (1911–1956) narrated common experiences of Filipino American unbelonging nearly a century ago. In his novel America is in the Heart (1946), Bulosan depicts growing up in Philippine poverty just a few years into US rule. ²³ Even in youth, he dreamed of moving to America and eventually migrated to Seattle in 1930.

During the same year, however, mobs of White men violently attacked Filipino farm workers in several cities around California. Anti-miscegenation laws prohibited Filipino men from marrying white women and anti-Filipino immigration restrictions were soon put in place. ²⁴ Needless to say, Bulosan quickly discovered the realities of American racism and discrimination as he struggled to survive in a new land, moving up and down the West Coast of the United States in search of opportunity. The terrible conditions he and his friends suffered pushed him into labor organizing and caused him sickness, ultimately leading to his early death.

Bulosan’s inability to realize the American dream was not isolated, but shared by thousands of Filipino migrants who experienced discrimination and regularly encountered signs saying “No Filipinos Allowed” throughout California. In “Be American,” Carlos Bulosan recounts conversations with his cousin Consorcio, who desperately sought to become American by advancing economically and obtaining citizenship, only to be let down in the process. Consorcio tells Carlos, with disappointment, “You should have told me. . .Filipinos can’t become American citizens.” Carlos replies, “Well, I could have told you, but I wanted you to learn.” Despite all that they had both endured in America, Carlos goes on to assure his cousin, “This is a country of great opportunity.” With resignation, Consorcio replies, “You have a wonderful dream.” ²⁵

In recent years, US Filipinos were again reminded that despite America’s presence in the Philippines, Filipino belonging in the States remains contingent on US political and economic priorities. During the Obama administration, many Filipino American families were separated and traumatized because of exponential increases in deportations, sparking outrage. ²⁶ Even before the surge in detentions, controversial family separations, and Muslim ban that characterized the Trump presidency, candidate Trump included the Philippines, “Asia’s Christian nation,” on a list of “terrorist nations” whose citizens he promised to bar from entering the US. ²⁷

In 2017, as many as 310,000 Filipino Americans were reported as undocumented, again causing widespread fear and panic in many families. ²⁸ Pastors and ministry leaders must understand the constant fear experienced by these immigrants and their loved ones, as their sense of belonging is always questioned or restricted by the American government. Especially for those who arrived in the United States as youth, the idea of leaving family and friends for a place they have never known is indeed terrifying.

Laboring Away to Build the Nation

Similar experiences of unbelonging afflict Filipinos today, both in the Philippines and throughout the global diaspora. Many who migrate to non-Western countries, often because they lack connections or means to migrate to the US, find themselves laboring in “3D” jobs—work that is dirty, dangerous, and demeaning. For instance, for Filipino migrants to Japan this might include working as entertainers, a vulnerable situation from which many Filipinas have been tricked or trafficked into sex work. ²⁹

For as long as the Philippine government relies on foreign remittances, the country’s most valuable export will continue to be its people. Every year, the Philippine government now celebrates its Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), honoring their sacrifices as bagong bayani or modern-day heroes. Despite this valorized framing, however, sociologist Robyn Rodriguez explains, “The Philippine state has reconfigured ideas of national belonging to encourage its citizens to leave the Philippines while simultaneously fostering their ties to the homeland.” ³⁰ In other words, by appropriating the rhetoric of heroism, the Philippine government hides the vulnerability and suffering of its people, many of whom labor far from their families under short-term, temporary contracts.

Among Asian American Christians

Though more studies are needed, it is worth noting that Filipino Americans also experience unbelonging in Asian American communities. Writing for the Asian American Policy Review, Nadal writes, “Filipino Americans have described discrimination from other Asian Americans, including being told they are ‘not Asian enough’; being stereotyped as inferior or uncivilized; or being completely overlooked or excluded altogether.” ³¹ Asian American organizations and discourse tend to center East Asian Americans and their perspectives, in turn marginalizing South and Southeast Asians.

In a rare ethnographic study on the subject, sociologist Anthony Ocampo observes the following among Filipino American college students: “For many, the Filipino student organization provided the only space where their Filipinoness had any cachet. In contrast, Filipino identity felt like a liability not only in the classroom but also in settings where whites and other Asians dominated the social landscape.” ³² White and East Asian perspectives also dominate many churches, especially on or near college campuses.

In these spaces, CM can lead Filipino American Christians to pursue belonging in Korean or Chinese American churches, motivating them to adopt East Asian spiritual practices perceived as superior to those of Filipino Americans. Such was the case at the now-disgraced Covenant Fellowship Church in Illinois, until the Filipino American members were unwilling to pay the cost of belonging there. ³³ Filipino American Evangelicals are particularly vulnerable to feelings of inferiority in Asian American Christian contexts because, generally speaking, the largest and most established Filipino American ministries are Catholic, followed by mainline Protestants, with Evangelicals often under-resourced.

America as Exile: “Filipinos in America” and “Filipino-Americans”

The works of Leny Strobel and E. J. R. David introduce many Filipino Americans to the violence and psychological damage inflicted by colonialism. By reading their works, many are also inspired to begin their decolonization processes. Strobel is a retired professor of American multicultural studies and author of Coming Full Circle: The Process of Decolonization Among Post-1965 Filipino Americans. ³⁶ David is a psychology professor at the University of Alaska, author of Brown Skin, White Minds: Filipino-/American Postcolonial Psychology. ³⁷ David’s work is influenced by Strobel and he wrote the foreword for the second edition of her book.

For Strobel, Filipino Americans might be more accurately described as “Filipinos in America.” In a section titled, “You can go home again,” she writes:

To be a Filipino is to feel a deep connectedness to one’s fellow being, to the Creator, to the country, to one’s self, and to everything else outside of the self. To be Filipino is to feel connected to the country’s history—past, present, and future. This connectedness remains even when the Filipino leaves the Philippines. In fact, this connection deepens more so on foreign soil where its authenticity is often challenged. Sometimes, it is other Filipinos who challenge this identity, especially those who have not yet escaped their colonized consciousness, and therefore continue to believe that Filipinos come from an impoverished culture, without hope or progress or change. ³⁸

For Strobel, the Philippines is home and the United States is not, and healthy identity or Filipino-ness is only possible by keeping the difference clear. To confuse America for home is an expression of CM.

She goes on to say, “To return home is to return to the ancient, to our anitos (spiritual beings), our ancestors, to folklore and oral traditions which contain the indigenous wisdom of my people.” ³⁹ Because the Philippines is home, to go home is to recover what colonialism stole, to regain what is “ours” and what was taken from “our people,” to re-indigenize or pre-colonize. In Strobel’s terms, home is more than a place (the Philippines), but also a way of life, a set of beliefs and practices that must be recovered in order to become authentically Filipino again. Christian practices, then, must be reevaluated through Filipino indigenous knowledge. ⁴⁰

Strobel laments, “We are scattered all over the world now like aimless wanderers in search of a home still. Many of us left the Philippines to follow the master to his home, to live in his world, misled by the promises of democratic ideals taught by the Thomasite teachers and later, the missionaries and Peace Corps volunteers who roamed our countryside with their civilizing mission.” ⁴¹ Following the literal meaning of the term, “diaspora” or scattering, figures prominently in Strobel’s work. Like exiles, then, Filipinos in America must return home, coming full circle by answering the ancestors’ call. The United States is the colonizer’s home and Filipinos cannot be at home there.

E. J. R. David takes a slightly different approach to these themes. As a clinician, David is concerned with the effects of colonial mentality, internalized oppression, and self-hatred among clients. Understanding precolonial Filipino society is important, according to David,

So that Filipinos and Filipino Americans today can have something they can be proud of that is truly and authentically theirs. . .for them to not feel like they owe everything to European colonizers; and for them to appreciate what was taken from them, what they have lost, what they might be missing, and thus, what they might be searching for and what they might want to have again. ⁴²

In this case, the struggle for home is the process of regaining a positive self-image through connection to the past. David uses the term “Filipino-/Americans” to make explicit that colonialism has so deeply wounded the Filipino psyche, that Filipinos have been conditioned to think of America as their home, promised land, or even savior.

This notion of the United States as promised land or eschaton is common among immigrants, especially among Filipino American Christians. It was from the American missionaries that many Filipinos, especially Protestants, learned Christianity and civilization. The United States delivered the Philippines from Japanese occupation during World War II, and Americanization brought with it democratization and access to the global economy. Thousands of Filipinos also fled to the United States during Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship. Many more have gained immigration status, US citizenship, and veterans benefits by serving the US Navy, forging strong commitments to American militarism and conservative politics. Today, the Philippine government still relies on the US Navy for protection against incursions from China.

It follows, then, that by coming to America many Filipino Christians gain proximity to the country and culture that they believe have saved them. For those who arrive as highly skilled workers, they might sincerely claim that God has delivered them from poverty and brought them into “a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exod 3:8, NRSVUE). Some may achieve very high levels of material comfort, leading them to believe that they have even reached a heavenly home. US Filipino churches who embrace the United States as home may in fact have CM operating in their theology and politics, under the guise of gratitude and the Filipino value of utang na loob (indebtedness that motivates action).

But as I have shown above, and as Strobel and David both argue, coloniality and unbelonging still haunt Filipino Americans, negatively impacting their health and relationships, especially with the next generation whose theology and politics are more progressive. Taken together, Strobel and David highlight a reality that many US Filipinos could avoid until recent years: that Filipino Americans—no matter how assimilated, educated, or Christianized—remain vulnerable to racialized violence. The heinous attacks against Noel Quintana, Vilma Kari, Amadeo Quindara, and many others have reminded Filipino Americans that their elders are seen as problematic foreigners, despite the honor given to them within Filipino families and churches. Strobel and David shed light on the forces that brought Filipinos to America, raising the possibility that the United States is not home, but instead exile.

The United States as Second Home: “Two homes and hearts” and “faithfully Filipino and American”

In contrast to Strobel and David, Joaquin Gonzalez and Stephen Cherry take a different approach to the concept of home, and with it, Christianity and identity. They describe Filipino Americans as having “two homes, two hearts,” ⁴³ and as “faithfully Filipino and American,” ⁴⁴ respectively. Based on their ethnographic interviews, Filipino Americans hold together multiple homelands and identities, and Christianity is central to their ability to do this.

Gonzalez makes explicit that the Philippines is home, and he refers to Filipino Americans as migrants, not immigrants. Unlike David, whose goal is to present precolonial Filipino life as pure, Gonzalez acknowledges precolonial migration in a way that challenges essentialism. He writes, “Ethnically, Filipinos are a product of hundreds of years of Chinese, Malay, and Indian migration and intermarriages, and thereafter close to four centuries of Spanish and American racial and cultural exchanges.” ⁴⁵ In no way does Gonzalez downplay the violence and pain of colonialism, but his analysis of religion is more sociological, complex, and forward-looking than that of Strobel or David.

For Gonzalez, it is simply an empirical observation that Filipinos “place religion at the center of their lives, wherever they sojourn.” ⁴⁶ For Filipino Americans, then, the Philippines remains their first or ancestral home, and the United States becomes their second or new home, where their spirituality is reconfigured as they maintain obligations in both homelands, old and new. ⁴⁷ The Filipino American church becomes the new barangay (traditional Filipino village, neighborhood, or community), even though it can never replace the first.

Churches are not only where US Filipinos are most visible ethnographically, but Christian faith becomes a catalyst for resistance against hegemony, as when Filipino American Methodists campaigned against martial law in their home country. ⁴⁸ “Filipinized” congregations can become counter-hegemonic spaces where identity and ethnicity are negotiated. ⁴⁹ Filipino American faith is developed as parishioners and their practices go back and forth between both homes in a transnational circular movement. ⁵⁰ Pastors serving US Filipinos must understand this “back and forth.”

Sociologist Stephen Cherry makes similar observations in his study of Filipino American Catholics. He acknowledges that Filipinos are a people in diaspora. But with Gonzalez, Cherry shows how Christianity motivates Filipino American political participation. This faith-based civic engagement expresses commitment to their new homelands. “Although Filipino migrants have a home to return to,” Cherry writes, “most do not return permanently. For many Filipinos, home is thus as much a place that is dear to their hearts and heritage as it is the physical location in which they reside.” ⁵¹

For both Gonzalez and Cherry, Filipino American churches are central to community and catalytic for political activity, even beyond the interests of the Filipino American community alone. ⁵² The practices that operate in these churches simultaneously connect them to the Philippines and the States in politically empowering ways. Christianity does not separate them from the motherland or cause them to denigrate Filipino culture, but in these churches faith is interwoven with the same cultural values that Strobel and David present as marks of authentic Filipino identity: kapwa (shared identity or mutual belonging), pakiramdam (feeling or intuition), utang na loób (gratitude with reciprocity), and pakikisama (putting others’ needs before one’s own). ⁵³

Informed by this understanding of home, Filipino American theology is labor in “home construction.” Gonzalez’s and Cherry’s findings leave more room for Filipino American Christians to view rootedness in the United States positively, while also encouraging connectedness to the Philippines and fulfilling obligations there. Many first-generation Filipino Americans choose to hold dual citizenship, and some may even own homes in both countries, consistent with Gonzalez’s and Cherry’s findings.

Filipino American churches can be empowered by having “two homes and two hearts” to do as the prophet Jeremiah tells the exiles who were waiting to return to Judea:

Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper. ⁵⁴

Building homes, both familial and ecclesial, can be embraced as part of Christian vocation, even for a community that understands itself in exile. This approach is honest about history while also remaining hopeful. As Gonzalez writes, Filipino American churches can become sites where “the familiar social structure of the barangay can be practiced.” ⁵⁵

US Filipino churches can hold the commitments that helped them to grow early on: welcoming new immigrants, affirming the beauty of Filipino culture, providing safety and hospitality, and supporting families in transition. At the same time, because the American home is more often the “primary residence,” Filipino American theologians and pastors can prioritize responsibilities to their church’s neighbors, with “neighbor” understood as a term requiring ongoing contextualization, as in Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan. Loving neighbors and seeking the city’s shalom may mean advocating for refugees’ rights or marching to support Black Lives Matter, aspects of Christian responsibility which are uncovered by claiming a home in the United States.